SIACfan

I believe you are correct if Mendez continues tracking on his current path. 4X HS State Champ, NCAA Champ as a true sophomore & competed very well on the senior level at the latest Olympic Trials beating McKenna, Green & Diakomihalis then only losing to Retherford 3-2. Very impressive for someone who is only 20 or 21 years old.

In an individual sport, an individual must stand a top the podium to be the best. In team sports, an individual can clearly be the best individual but not win team championships because of a lack of supporting cast members. When it comes to the GOAT, even in team sports, individuals will be judged in the end by titles. But the lack of titles does not eliminate them from the discussion. In individual sports it absolutely does - IMO.

The man is a living legend. OSU & the sport of wrestling is losing one of the GOAT's. He is still relatively young, I wonder what his plans are?

Well if he can follow Snyders' path he will end the debate of the Indiana GOAT.

Matt Lee went 5-3 against D1 opponents in 2024 wrestling in open tournaments.

I don't doubt that, but it doesn't change the fact that 97 kg (214 lbs) is a long way away from 197 pounds. That is a lot of weight for someone with Christian Carroll's frame to cut. But if he is able to do it, there is no guarantee that he will be as dominate as he was this past weekend at 97 kg. I'm not trying to knock Christian Carroll here. I'm all about the success of our Indiana guys. My comments were more about raising the topic of the need for a weight class between 197 & HWT at the college level. Christian is one individual that I feel would greatly benefit from just such a weight class.

I'm no expert & am in no way close to the situation. But looking at it from a far, 17 pounds is a lot of weight to shed & keep off for an entire college wrestling season for someone built like Christian Carroll. I would suspect he is already on a pretty strict diet just to be at 97 kg, but again I have no real insight except that he wrestled 220 as a junior in HS. Cutting that kind of weight & being competitive at the college level can be extremely difficult. Mendez is a good example. He was a completely different animal this year at 141 vs 133 his freshman season. He was much more powerful this year. Chrisian is a perfect example of why college wrestling needs a weight class between 197 & HWT. And with the recent development of the competitors in the HWT class in college, it is only getting tougher for guys who are at their best around 210-220 pounds. I'm not actually suggesting adding a weight class to college but just restructuring the classes to: 125 133 141 150 160 172 184 197 215 HWT It more closely follows the international weight classes to boot.

The notion that Brands needs to go is about as ridiculous as it gets. Is there really any serious debate going on? As the makers of this video point out, the only team that has been better than Iowa over the duration of Brands' tenure is Penn State. So if you fire Brands, who are you going to replace him with? And what would the expectations be?

125 was the real difference. At 184, 9 of 19 contestants who finished outside of the top 10 scored double digit points. Where at 124, only 2 of 19 people outside of the top 10 scored double digit points. And only 3 of 19 outside of the top 10 scored any points at all.

Not sure that 41 & 57 were that wide open, especially 157 as Haines had been #1 there all year. I think it had more to do with the fact that you can only pick two #1's or #2's & most people had more faith elsewhere. Brooks was by far the most popular #1 as 24 out of 29 contestants choose him. Kirkvliet was the next most popular #1 followed by Keckheisen. 19 of the 29 contestants had Brooks with either Kirkvliet or Keckeisen, and one person had Kirkvliet & Keckheisen as their top picks. So 20 out of 29 had some combination of those 3 as their top picks. But I will say that after the top guys at 41 & 57, it was wide open & most of us didn't do a very good job of handicapping those weights. I would also say the scores this year far exceeded those from last year, because of Starocci, Vito & Carr being seeded 9, 6 & 4 respectively. Those to me were 3 very obvious picks outside of the top 2 seeds, and 20 of 29 contestants had all 3 of them. And the top 16 finishers had all three. If you didn't have all 3 of those guys you had zero chance of winning. Heck, I had all three of them & Brooks & Keckheisen & still only managed to finish 11th. One last thought, Starocci was clearly the easiest pick of the contest as 28 of 29 people had him and 23 took him as their wildcard.

Well I had 5 champs, a 2nd & a 3rd & that wasn't even good enough to finish top 4. Given the rules, I would have thought that would have done a little better. But having Starocci seeded 9th, Vito 6th & Carr 4th (all former Champs) helped several of us get to 5 champs.

Davison definitely deserves some love. That was one heck of a tournament run. Unfortunately Kerkvliet stood in the way of a story book ending. But hey he gave us Indiana boys two NCAA D1 finalists & fun ride. Hats off to Mr. Lucas Davison!

Those picks were OK - I guess.

That roll to turn Barletts takedown into his own was insane. JESSIEEE MENDEZZZ!

Have I missed a change already? I have David Carr as a 4 seed.

125 McKee (9) 133 Vito (6) 141 Koderhandt (11) 149 Gomez (6) 157 Lee (11) 165 Carr (4) 174 Starocci (9) - Wildcard 184 Keckeisen (1) 197 Brooks (1) 285 Hendrickson (3)

I am not saying his seed is wrong based on their seeding criteria. I am just saying it doesn't appear right to me. I find it interesting that quality losses are not considered. IMO the quality of your losses are more telling than Win%, RPI, Qualifying event placement, or even Quality wins. Example, Vito is 13-2 while Ragusin is 21-2. But Ragusin's losses are to Van Dee & Shawver while Vito's are both to Crookham. In my book that clearly puts Vito ahead of Ragusin. Then when you consider Shawver has 5 losses (3 of which are to guys outside of the top 15), while Vito has a better Win% & much better losses - Vito > Shawver. With Orine at 15-2 it is probably less apparent. His losses are to Fix & Bouzakis, but Vito should get a slight edge here with both to Crookham. And Win% is less than 2% different. Again based on the criteria you posted, his seed may be correct but I just don't agree with it. But I admit that past results prior to this year are playing into my thought process as well.

Starocci is a major wildcard this year. Clearly he is the cream of the weight class but the extent of the injury is unknown to most of us. And Lewis is way to good to beat if Starocci is not close to 100%. If this injury prevents him from becoming a 4-timer it is a perfect example of why there are so few of them. Even if you have the supreme talent to get it done, it doesn't ensure you won't avoid this type of scenario.

But in Vito's case his only 2 losses are to undefeated & 2nd seeded Ryan Crookham. Yet he is seeded behind Orine, Shawver & Ragusin who all have 2 or more losses as well & to lower ranked guys. I understand him being ranked behind Fix & Crookham but not the other three. Carr's 4 seed makes sense given O'Toole & Mesenbrink are undefeated & he lost to Ramirez.

There is always going to be several perspectives. But the way I see it Rooks took advantage of the opportunity that the Teske seeding technicality offered him. While Boarman simply failed to take care of business & may pay a steep price because of it.

For some reason I can't edit the initial post, but... HWT - Nick Willham 7th

Special Shout to Mendez! Winning the 141 Title by beating Woods & Bartlett on the way. His interview was sweet. It's clear he has bigger aspirations in mind. Here is a run down of all the Indiana native's that placed (please let me know if I missed anyone). 133 - C. Rooks 7th 141 - Mendez 1st, Lemley 4th 149 - G Rooks 7th 157 - Lee 5th 174 - Baumann 8th 197 - Allred 3rd HWT - Davison 3rd Brayton Lee could have been in the finals. He lost to Will Lewan in SV in the semifinals, but he had a TD all but secured in the final seconds of regulation. If he would have just covered Lewan's hips he would have gotten the 3. But he had Lewan almost on his back & went for that instead. Lewan was then able to scoot his hips out & square up. Hindsight is 20-20. Good luck to all these guys at Nationals.

This is a interesting topic to me. I am talking sports in general here not just wrestling, but when I was a kid my parents spent very little for me to participate in local leagues & next to nothing for me to be a part of school teams. But back then kids travel sports didn't much exist. Plus kids specializing in one sport year round wasn't really a thing either. Neither was the sport specialized training centers/clubs for kids. It was a very different landscape back then. But by the time my kids were growing up (who are adults now), the specialization was first appearing, at least to my knowledge. Everything my kids got into, it got extremely competitive & expensive at an early age with travel teams & training. And one of the things I noticed was all the people trying to exploit kids sports for profit. Now I'm not saying everyone running kids tournaments &/or training facilities is guilty of this, but there are those out there that are guilty of it. In one particular instance, I witnessed a husband & wife who got involved as volunteers running tournaments when their child was playing. They quickly discovered that they could make money doing it. After their child was grown & no longer playing they continued to run tournaments for extra money. After about a decade, both had quit their jobs & were running tournaments as a business. Once my kids were grown & done playing sports, I became an official & worked a lot for them. They would hold meetings in the off-season for the officials trying to ensure they had a large set of officials for the tournaments they were running every weekend 8 months out of the year. They always preached about how it was all about the kids, but their actions got more & more driven by the dollar with every passing year. I eventually stopped working for them. I'm not certain what my point is exactly, except that as parents just remember what is most important.

Thanks Maligned! I appreciate the insight. I can't say that I have ever seen any controversy over this, but I've never watched much Freestyle until the last 4-5 years.

Thanks! Do you know the rule on injury time in Freestyle?